


The Funny Thing About Love

by RobinsonsWereHere



Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Canon Backstory, Canon Compliant, Divorce, F/M, Family Feels, Feels, Love, Pre-Canon, Romance, Unplanned Pregnancy, everything goes downhill from there, starts alright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23884438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinsonsWereHere/pseuds/RobinsonsWereHere
Summary: Henry Spencer and Madeleine Baker are fairly certain they love each other. They don'treallyknow what that feels like, but they just have to keep going to find out, right?But maybe 'fairly certain' isn't enough to raise a child...
Relationships: Henry Spencer/Madeleine Spencer
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	The Funny Thing About Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myglassesaredirty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myglassesaredirty/gifts).



> this was supposed to be a drabble. as you can see, it got away from me. my version of how the Spencer family came to be, and how they fell part.

It doesn’t take long for Henry to fall in love with Maddie after he meets her.

(In the end, he’s never sure he got all the way there. But that is much further in our story.)

They go out on a date on a dare. Unprofessional, yes, but Maddie, largely ignored by the psychiatrist she often shadows, has fallen in easily with Brett and Henry and their friends of a similar age at the station. Henry has always thought she was pretty, and when she agreed to the dare Brett proposed, Henry wasn’t fool enough to decline.

The date goes spectacularly. He comes out of it convinced he’s in love.

(And _this_ is where our story starts.)

\---

Maddie thinks she loves Henry. She’s often frustrated by love, struggling to match her experiences to what she’s learned studying the human brain and how it works. Rarely is she certain enough to actually _tell_ the person she loves. But when, after two months of dating, Henry Spencer tells her he loves her, she finds her tongue surprisingly free as she smiles and says it back.

He makes her _happy._ She feels safe with him. She’s even starting to tentatively see a future with him, a rose-colored fantasy that ignores many of the facts of their current lives. Still, if this isn’t love, she’s never going to find it.

So she lets her walls down, lets Henry in in ways she’s let in very few others. And she doesn’t regret it. The only things that change between them are changes for the better, making them happier with each other, closer with each other. The rose-colored future begins to look a little more real.

And then, eight months into their relationship, a positive pregnancy test makes Maddie question if eight months is enough of a foundation for _this._

(As it turns out, it is not. But that isn’t revealed for a long, long time.)

\---

Henry is thinking about proposing.

He has his mother’s ring. She gave it to him when he left for college, a family tradition that’s been around for decades, since the days when most girls at college were there to find an educated spouse, not to educate themselves. Obviously, Henry hasn’t found a use for it yet.

But with Madeleine Baker... he thinks he just might.

Of course, he’s going to play it safe. They’ve only been together for eight months; he’ll wait until it’s been at least a year. Two seems like a better bet, but something about Maddie just draws him in…

And then, one night, one simple night, all of his plans go out the window.

Maddie is strangely subdued when he gets to her place, making dinner almost silently. He helps, but she doesn’t speak to him much other than to direct him on where to find things or what dish to use.

“Mad?” he asks when they’re sitting together on the couch. “You wanna tell me what’s wrong?”

She sighs deeply, morosely, and settles against him. He wraps an arm around her, rubbing her shoulder and waiting for her to speak.

“I’m pregnant, Henry,” she says quietly.

He freezes, feeling like the wind has been knocked out of him. But even startled, only one course of action occurs to him.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Alright, Maddie, it’s okay. We’ll figure it out. I’m not going anywhere.”

(He’s not sure they ever really figure it out.)

\---  
Two weeks after her first doctor’s appointment, Maddie is still wrapping her head around her pregnancy. Reassured by Henry’s support, she’d decided to keep the baby, even as unsure as she is that she’s in any position to be a parent. Surely they can do it together, right?

Now that she knows her baby is okay, she’s starting to think about other aspects of her life, and how this will effect them. She’s still in grad school, for christ’s sake! And her Catholic family will probably not be too happy about this.

Should she and Henry get married?

The question arrives unbidden in her mind, startling her so much that she refuses to think more on the issue, for now. In the past, when she’d planned out her life, marriage would come after she had a doctorate, and after at least three years of dating. But then again, in that plan, babies come after marriage.

Friday night, a month after she’d learned she was pregnant, she has a date with Henry again. He is lovely as always, doting on her like he has since she decided to keep the baby. They eat dinner on his porch, the outside lights turned off so they can see the stars.

Maddie finds herself lost in thought as they finish their meal. She has a lot to think about, these days.

“Hey, Maddie,” Henry says softly. She turns to look at him and gasps a little when she sees him kneeling, holding out a ring.

“This-- this is because of the baby, right?” she asks, when she can speak.

Henry’s face falls. “I mean-- I would’ve done it sooner or later, it’s not _just_ because of the baby--”

Maddie feels herself turning red. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean to imply-- I just assumed-- sorry-- yes!”

He grins. “Really?”

“Yes!” She stands, smiling, and gently takes the ring, sliding it onto her finger. “It’s beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful.” Henry pulls her into his arms and kisses her hair. “Hey… you’re not only saying yes because of the baby, right?”

Maddie pauses.

If the past month had been business as usual, and then tonight he had gotten down on one knee, she would’ve said no.

It would’ve been too soon.

So, she’s saying yes because of the baby… but she probably would’ve said ye to him at _some_ point, even without…

“Of course not,” she says softly.

(This conversation will ring in her ears for decades to come.)

\---

Henry paces the empty maternity room, waiting. He wants to smoke, which he hasn’t done since before he joined the academy. The all-consuming worry encompassing him is worse than any he’s felt over the past seven and a half months. Earlier that night, when Maddie had gone into labor early, he’d panicked. Now, his wife is in the OR and he cannot be with her and all he can do is wait and hope his baby and the woman he loves are both okay.

They are, thank god.

They name their little boy Shawn Henry Spencer. He is born with a heart defect which will be fixed in a few months. The doctors want him to grow as much as he can with it, and get stronger. But aside from that, Maddie and Shawn are both okay.

Henry says a prayer, relief washing over him as his son grabs his finger. Things can only get easier, after this.

(This is not the hardest thing he will ever go through, but tonight, he cannot imagine anything harder.)

\---

Maddie slams the knife down on top of the garlic, crushing it with more force than strictly necessary. She glares at the clock; a quarter to six. Oh, when that husband of hers gets home she is going to have words with him…

Shawn, all of nine years old, is running around the backyard with Gus, digging in the mud with sticks and occasionally sword fighting with them (though Gus does not like to get dirty). It will be hell on Maddie’s yard, but that is fine. It’s normal and healthy for nine-year-olds to be running around getting dirty with their friends.

It is _not_ normal for them to be learning to case a joint for exits and identify when a person is telling a lie.

She finishes the garlic and picks it up, grimacing at the stickiness of it as she peels the papery outside off. But when the door opens, she accidentally tosses the clove in the trash instead of the peel.

“Hey, Mad,” Henry greets, hanging his hat on a hook. 

She presses her lips together, folding her arms over her chest ans she walks around the island. “Hello, dear. How was work?”

“Fine…” his brow furrows. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Do you know what our son told me today?”

“I never know what he’ll say anytime he opens his mouth.”

Maddie purses her lips. “He asked,” she says, “if you were home early today, because he’d been practicing ‘paying attention to stuff’ and wanted the full banana split you promised him if he could, I don’t know, count all of the hats in the diner.”

Henry grins. “He’s practicing, good! I honestly didn’t think he would.Good for him, finally taking a little responsibility for himself.”

Maddie gapes. “What? Henry, he’s nine! You missed my entire point!”

“What, the banana split?” Her husband has the nerve to look legitimately confused. “Mad, I know it’s a lot of dessert, but it’s his prize, y’know? For working hard.”

“Working hard at what?”

“Um…” Henry rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “I thought I’d… teach him some stuff.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Police stuff?”

The kid’s got gifts, Mad! If I don’t teach him how to use them, he’ll just burn out!”

“Henry, he’s nine!”

Perhaps it is fitting, that Shawn, Shawn’s abilities, Henry’s honing of them, is their first big argument that doesn’t blow over. Perhaps it is an omen, a sign. Neither Henry nor Maddie think of that now; it might not be any of those.

What it _is_ is the first time Shawn comes in from playing in the yard to find his parents fighting.

(But it is nowhere near the last time that happens.)

\---

Henry almost slams the door and practically stomps up the stairs, wrestling his tie from around his neck. The only thing that makes him try to be quiet is the knowledge that his fourteen-year-old son is probably asleep; it’s nearly midnight. He all but throws open the door to his and Maddie’s bedroom, kicking off his shoes as soon as he crosses the threshold.

“That son of a bitch is going to walk free,” he growls.

“Oh, what a horrible thing to happen on your anniversary,” Maddie murmurs, not looking up from her magazine. She picks up a glass of wine from her nightstand and takes a sip.

Henry frowns. “Anniversary of what?”

Now, Maddie sets down the magazine. “Did you just say, ‘anniversary of what’?”

“Yes?”

“Henry.” She sits up, folding her legs and leaning her elbows on her knees, chin in her hands. “It’s our anniversary.”

“No it’s not, our anniversary isn’t until November,” he scoffs. “Madeleine, I’m not just going to forget our anniversary.”

She turns, grabs a daily calendar off of his nightstand, and literally throws it at him.

November sixteenth.

“That’s not right,” he says aloud.

“I’ve scheduled an appointment with a couples’ therapist two weeks from now.”

Henry winces.

“Is there a problem with that?”

“That’s the date of the appeal,” he mutters.

Maddie sighs and returns to her magazine. “Well, I guess you’ll have to prioritize.”

(By the time he does, it’s already too late.)

\---

Maddie fiddles with her wedding ring, sitting outside the office of a divorce attorney.

Does she really want this?

She’d asked herself the same thing years ago, twisting only an engagement ring back then, and the answer had been yes, but back then there had been a baby in her belly and she couldn’t have said anything to Henry’s proposal but yes.

Now, that baby is all grown up. He’s just turned eighteen. He will start his own life, and Maddie will still be his mother, but she doesn’t have to stay in Santa Barbara, with Henry, to be that.

She had wanted to do things, once upon a time. Wanted her own clinic, wanted at least a few years of no attachments to travel, to be able to drop everything as soon as she learned there was a doctor she liked giving a conference, even halfway across the world. She hasn’t gotten any of that.

For a long time, she’d thought what she had gotten was better. Shawn and Henry have made her so happy, and she still loves Shawn with all her heart, but Henry…

It’s just so _hard._

She’s worried she hadn’t had the time to fall in love with him properly, before Shawn. She’s worried that when he leaves, their marriage will fall totally apart.

All of this has been hovering around her in a cloud for _so long_... she can’t take it anymore.

Maddie takes a deep breath and leaves the car, heading to the door of the office.

\---

Henry sits at his kitchen table, not bothering to turn a light on. The last of the setting sun makes the objects in front of him glint.

One is his wedding ring. He hasn’t worn it in months, not since the divorce. But he’d found it on the kitchen table, sitting on top of a note.

The other is Shawn’s cell phone. Henry had bought it for him in the hopes that Shawn would be safer if he could always get in touch with him. Now, it’s just a symbol of how much Shawn does not want to be found.

The note is only three words. _You know why._ The ring sits at the bottom of it, presumably indicating the ‘why’. Shawn must have grabbed it from the bottom of Henry’s dresser drawer.

Henry buries his face in his hands.

The two people he loves most in the world have left him.

Where had he gone wrong?

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! Leave a comment or kudos if you enjoyed, or find me on tumblr at nursebarbarahereward!


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